Every man is an Orpheus, so he but carry about in him an inward melody. There is for him “a new heaven and a new earth.”
This world is an insolvable puzzle to human reason. It is full of the most absurd antinomies, the most distressing cruelties, the most amazing contradictions. No wonder men’s minds take refuge in stubborn stoicism, in agnosticism, in blank unfaith.
There is no intellectual faith, no rational creed, no logical belief. FAITH COMES ONLY THROUGH MUSIC. It is when the heart sings that the mind is cleared. Then the pieces of the infinite chaos of things drop into order, confusion ceases, they march, dance, coming into radiant concord.
Marcus Aurelius, that curious anomaly of the Roman world, perfect dreamer in an age of iron, was rich in inner music. The thought in him beamed like a ray of creative harmony over the disordered crowd of men and events.
“Welcome all that comes,” he wrote, “untoward though it may seem, for it leads you to the goal, the health of the world order. Nothing will happen to me that is not in accord with nature.”
None but so noble a mind can see a noble universe, a noble humanity, a noble God.
What a drop from such a level to the place of the mad sensualists and pleasure-mongers who only know
“To seize on life’s dull joys from a strange fear,
Lest losing them all’s lost and none remains!”
What a whirl of cabaret music, what motion and forced laughter, what wild discord of hot viands, drugged drinks, and myriad-tricked lubricity it takes to galvanize us when our souls are dry and cracked and tuneless!